Good News Everyone! An End In Sight - Erylian Extra April 2021 Edition
I feel like for how much I had to write about last month, even more has happened in this past month. Some of these big news items weren’t even on our radar at the start of April, and yet here we are. All in all, April ended up being quite the eventful month for us! We have a few minor bits of podcast news, but the excitement this month really comes from real life stuff, like getting covid shots and making mead!
PODCAST
So while I was pretty spot on with not getting an episode edited in the last month, I did start working on remastering Episode 1 of the Erylian Epic. And while it hasn’t had a second pass yet for music, ambience, and sound effects, I wanted to share the first 10 minutes with you now. The main reason for this, is so you can get an idea listening to the remaster and the original for the change in audio quality, as well as some changes to the overall flow of the episode.
I have also written up a script for, and recorded, a recap for the first arc of the Mieveht Story. This was something we had planned to do all along but became a big undertaking and I ultimately never really figured out what kind of style I wanted to use for the recaps. To give the behind the scenes peak at things, because that’s kinda what these newsletters are for, I redid all of the episode summaries while remastering these episodes and I used those summaries as the basis for the recap script. Some minor changes were made to make things flow together instead of being their own individual blocks of text, but I think it does a good job of getting someone up to date really quickly! I’m going to drop that in here for you guys to listen to as well. It needs a little bit more work before I put it into the podcast feed. I plan to do some minor backgrounds, probably mostly ambience instead of music, and I should also add in a Patreon shout out as well.
Streaming
Streaming for the AinE Team month we pretty standard. We were joined by Mr. Hand Gaming for his first time playing Depth, where we ended up with a full lobby which was a lot of fun for running games. Also, technically it was early May, but it happened before I start writing this newsletter, but Caitlin got a capture card and had her first stream with our Nintendo Switch, playing the new Pokemon Snap! And Damian jumped in early on a new survival PvEvP game called Scavengers, which was his first stream with Twitch drops enabled.
Real Life
Covid Vaccines!
Eligibility of the Covid Vaccines has opened up in our state in April and members of the cast have started to get it. What’s really amazing is that this is signaling the end of our hiatus. As more and more people are getting their vaccines, we have started to discuss getting back in person to hang out again and are planning to work back into playing more D&D and recording more Adventures in Erylia in the upcoming months. Hopefully, by the next newsletter, we have had a group night to hang out and play some games to share out excitement about!
Announcing DungeonCartography
This was something that exploded really fast for my dive into map making. It literally started as a thought in my head on my drive home from work one day in April, and has now taken off into being it’s own thing and being “fully” launched. As I have been doing more maps for Troll Lord Games and getting feedback from their team, others I share the maps with, and people who hang out in my map making streams, it has really increased my confidence in doing map making more broadly. This is where DungeonCartography was born. DungeonCartography is the name of my new Etsy store where you can buy download packages of maps that I am making, as well as commission me to create a custom map for you. Right now, I am sticking to smaller scale maps, 15x15, because I am pretty comfortable with finishing one of these maps in 2-3 hours, which should allow me to do 2-3 maps a month. For the stores first month, I am offering half off on pre-made maps, and as someone reading this newsletter, I am actually giving you a coupon for $5 off a $25 order. Right now, this means you can get a discount on a custom map commission, but in the future, with enough maps in the store, this will allow getting a few free maps if you are buying enough of them!
Mead Update!!!
I hope other people are as excited about these as I am. I have had so much fun diving into mead making and now sort of exploring more on my own. I’ve learned a ton along the way, and Caitlin says she can tell when we sample the latest brews that I have been getting better as I go too. Got a bunch of pictures in the last month because sort of a lot happened with the brewing in a fairly short span of time, and honestly, if it weren’t for the pictures, I wouldn’t even remember what order things happened in.
First of all, we got some new brews going! Here’s what was started:
Coffee Mead! - This mead was started as a traditional with one major difference. Instead of water, it was made with cold brew coffee. I swear, after how quickly this mead started bubbling, and how energetic it was, yeast must be effected by caffeine! This one remained pretty bitter, but that kind of makes sense, it’s just black coffee and all of the sugar was converted to alcohol. There was some cinnamon sticks and ground cardamom tossed in as well, but I don’t think I added enough for those flavors to shine through the coffee.
Chocolate Mead! - This mead started off as a plain traditional, just water, honey, and yeast. What is interesting is after it’s first week, not much of the sugar had been turned to alcohol yet (it had an estimated abv 1%), but it was super bubbly and fizzy. We described it as exactly what Ariel is talking about when she says she likes honey juice. It was light, sweet, and you could probably drink the whole jar and not get drunk.
Pomegranate-Hibiscus (v2) - This one I was really excited for. I think it was because bottling the first version of this made me realize I had issues with my meads stalling out. When I learned that, I learned a lot about keeping a mead going and how ideally you are fermenting the mead dry and getting it sweeter after fermentation is done. It was also the most complex of the new batch. The base is a bottle of POM brand pomegranate juice. Added to it was blackberry blossom honey, hibiscus flowers, ground cardamom, and grains of paradise, with a little bit of water to top it off.
One thing that is great, is that all of these meads should be sitting around 14%abv right now. To keep track of the brews and also get these estimated ABVs, I am using an app that someone from the /r/mead subreddit created called Mead Mate. It is super simple to use and takes place of the notes you saw written on blue tape in the previous mead updates.
There were so many of them for a while and I loved it. Didn’t actually take any pictures of the process, but in this past month I have actually bottled the three meads in front. I am bringing some small taster bottles with my to my moms for mothers day and am excited to see how they have turned out, but I’ve got some larger bottles to age a bit longer. They wont last long though. Once AinE can get together again, I am sure we will drink them. Downsides of only making half gallon batches is there isn’t enough to share, drink, and age! Also, thankfully I am fine with Grolsch beer. Cause after seeing it as a super common way to get bottles, I have started buying it myself to bottle this stuff in when it is ready. It’s like getting free beer if you’re reusing the bottles!
I said a lot happened with the mead this month, right? So I started taking readings a bit more frequently after learning that you don’t necessarily need to wait a full month for fermentation to occur. Here’s how things were looking after a couple weeks. And damn, did I get those levels consistent or what?! Once things had been going for a few weeks, I could tell the fermentation was slowing down due to lack of gravity changes. Also, based on ABV calculation, I was near the tolerance of the yeast used. So with a week of little change in gravity, it was time to rack everything into secondary. At this point, each mead had some stuff added to it.
Coffee stayed nice and simple. A single split vanilla bean was tied to a string and left to float suspended in the jar.
The chocolate mead finally became chocolate with the addition of cacao nibs, cocoa powder, and also a split vanilla bean.
And Pom-Hib v2 got more hibiscus, as well as some rosehips tossed in.
From what I have read about some of these secondary ingredients, these aren’t all set it and forget flavors so I am trying them every week to see if it is time to put these into fresh jars. So far, I am loving what is happening with the pom-hib. It was very very tart after primary, but the addition of rosehips seems to be balancing that out and it is turning out to be quite nice. The chocolate? It actually tastes like chocolate! It is strong, but I have read that chocolate often needs to age for up to a year to open up. The coffee? It is still strong, still bitter. I am hoping it mellows out. I wish I had some lactose to add to it for a creamier coffee mouthfeel, but I have a feeling I will need to sweeten this up in the end.
And now we’re gonna let ‘em sit.
